Rue du Canal, Moret-sur-Loing 1908

Clarence Gagnon made this painting, *Rue du Canal, Moret-sur-Loing*, with oils, and you can tell he’s working fast, keeping the brushwork loose and the colours luminous. There's a real material presence to the paint, it's thick and juicy, especially in the foreground where the road is rendered with small, broken strokes of browns and greys. Look at how these marks create a real sense of texture. You can almost feel the rough, uneven surface beneath your feet. But then, as you look further into the scene, the paint thins out and the colours soften. The buildings in the background are shrouded in a misty light, and the trees are just suggestions of form. In some ways this reminds me of Vuillard, particularly that feeling of the world dissolving in front of you. And like him, Gagnon shows us that art is as much about feeling as it is about seeing.